Archaic Learning

There is a reason and season for everything. The old-styled systems of learning has come a long way over the recent years. When I was young, my learning institution was, get the lesson, and if you didn’t understand it, you were forced to be separated from your class and labeled as the one who is incapable to learn or interpret what is being taught. Built from a masculine-dominated, left-minded system that operated from that frame of mind and time. There were many of us who had more of a creative side, and working more from the right side of our brains than the left. The whole system had left a lot of us behind and deemed us as uneducated and ignorant in that regard. We weren’t seen as someone who could be productive or useful in the society that we were born into. And speaking for myself, I wasn’t. I had to go take a longer road to get there because of the cards that I was dealt with.

And don’t be a class clown, disruptive and rude, you were just labeled as a complete dunce or failure. There was a place where they’d put you in a corner and create a cardboard cutout to surround you in. I remember the title of that box and it was called, “G.I. DO DO.” No one would pay you any attention, not even the teachers. Imagine your children going through that now. That would be a grand lawsuit.

And so, we have the act of leaving no child behind, where the child can pass the grade even if they struggled the year, by language barriers, processing, or trying to keep the child focused on it. I see the growth and effort that goes with pulling small groups out with intervention specialists, where it doesn’t showcase as much that the child is struggling with learning at faster paces than the other students and trying to get more 1:1 attention to focus on the child. It may have made strides in a lot of ways, but the whole educational system is still broken.

They have us handling all of the adjustments to fit their archaic molds. It’s still broken because it isn not balanced. All children do not learn and process the same. And academics should be fitting the child, not the child, “fitting in the academy.” I cannot speak for other countries, but our children are failing only because the systems keep failing them. The students that have thrived on these archaic systems were programmed through them, for some, not with study alone, but other investments that had nothing to do with the child at all. Whatever the efforts were, they always had the advantages. Those parents made sure of it. The networks and connections have all the glory.

Because of the progression of the evolutionary minds of our children, we have created a new role, an Educational Aide (EA), to assist teachers in the classrooms to instruct the EA to keep the student engaged by redirection, focus and motivated to learn. In my role, I’m to help the child not fall behind in the work as well as working with their behaviors. A Behavioral Technician (BT), is doing both. All these roles and still the educational systems are not changing. The roles and responsibilities are. This mandated system that refuses to change will only create more problems and cause schools to fail the children and have more parents resort to online and homeschooling. There are not enough staff to support these roles for the child, and the schools cannot provide them the resources depending on the locations as well. A child who is being forced to be held back could be the very one to create something so grand that it could save everyone’s lives, but without the support they never could have that chance. That is something to keep in mind.

My suggestions are to create an educational system that recognizes and encourages each child in their strengths and weaknesses in learning. The specials, which is art music and gym, should be more integrated into the curriculums. It shouldn’t be a local or national vote on this matter , it should be concrete, just as the four corners of the building stands as a school. Sciences, technology, biology, economics and everything removed should be brought back and placed further in. Entrepreneurship should also be a staple. Why can’t it be an equal opportunity, instead of some schools holding these things “privately,” so that their children can have access to it all? This is what separates the systems that they have in place. This is how they also divide the populace. Starting with the our children. An unjust cracking at the seams, archaic foundation that will eventually fail us all.